The year was 2007, the location was the annual CES conference, the announcement included the promise of the IPTV on Xbox 360! 

We have had been spun a long tale and even though Mediaroom (U-verse) has made some great strides I am not seeing any of the promises being fulfilled. I am not sure who should catch the blame here AT&T or Microsoft so this serves as my small protest to both … Where is my integrated entertainment experience in the home!?

According to some reports this promise may come to Europe long before it gets state side. British Telecom is set to deliver on the promise of IPTV later in 2009, apparently their BT TV service has been flagging and they are hoping to be a barnacle on the ship of Xbox success.

If you have seen the new Android (Googles phone) adverts where the guy grabs his phone takes a picture of a barcode and is immediately comparing prices on his phone, then you we will really dig this new mobile app called Microsoft Tag.

You can quickly create create tags and define what action (URL, vCard, Free Text, Dialer) that tag will take. Below is a tag I created in about 5 seconds … download the mobile app from here and check it out. You do not have to even get the camera to focus accurately and the app quickly picks up enough information to pull down the command for the mobile action.

My tag simply display some text on your cell phone (I am curious how it reacts on non Windows Mobile phones), but you can also prompt your phone to dial a number, add a contact or navigate to a URL. I really think the applications for this are endless from advertising, real estate, to every day purchase … below is an example of a Microsoft game that is using a tag. Give it a try and find out all about the Halo Wars gaming!

I have been reviewing Live Mesh recently and simultaneously helping my wife synch information between her notebook and PC, my music workstation and the cloud. There are a couple of things that I think need additional polish (interface for synching any folders) but overall it is doing a good job of replacing the functions of FolderShare Live Sync.

I had heard rumor that there were a few fortunate folk who have added there Windows Mobile phones to the Mesh after successfully downloading and installing the Live Mesh software. Unfortunately when I installed the software I was politely informed that it could not add my phone to the mesh.

Coincidentally I had recently tried to sign up for the Tech Preview of Azure, I actually thought it might be fun to try and develop a couple of apps that relied on Azure Cloud services we have been hearing so much about. Almost immediately after signing up for Azure I was able to add my phone to the mesh and I have been happily synching my pictures and documents from my phone to my Live Desktop.

So if you have a Windows Mobile phone and often lament the lack of automated synching to the cloud or your desktop try:

1. Sign up for the Azure Tech preview.
2. Download and install Live Mesh to your mobile device: http://m.mesh.com.

Your mileage may vary, this may have been a pure coincidence, but this worked for me!

It has been a while since I have done significant UI work for a Windows application, however, the last product I remember developing we broke almost every rule in the book with regards to storing local data on the PC. The main reason for this level of contravention was that Windows NT, and subsequently, Windows 2000 never complained. Couple that with the fact that everyone basically ran as administrator led to programmer apathy and a lack of Windows compatibility.

With the advent of Vista and the persistence of UAC we have been forced to collectively understand what we should and should not do when it comes to reading and writing application specific data, and trust me this will not go away in Windows 7. Here are my top 3 bad data storage decisions for Windows:

• Storing User and Application data in the Program Files – Now I am not talking about installation type data, but I am referring to user specific information that probably will not be shared.
• Reading and Writing from System32 – There may be a few edge cases where a read is needed but a write?
• Writing to Global registry settings – enough said…

.NET Framework has a really convenient enumerated type, Environment.SpecialFolder, which is used in Environment.GetFolderPath

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData + “\AppName”)

Here are a list of the members that will get you quick access to various locations on your PC, I find the top 7 or so the most useful and UAC appropriate. Here are a couple of links on Windows Compatibility and Configuring User Access Control.

I recently purchased an Xbox and I must say, considering that have yet to acquired a sports game, that I am very impressed. I got the Xbox 360 pro (with the 60gb hard drive) and this allowed me to take full advantage of the recent updates for the New Xbox Experience (NXE).

There is a metric ton of videos, demos, pictures, community games, themes and online goodness that really extend the entertainment experience of the Xbox. The interface is really intuitive and looks great in 1080p.

Netflix Instant Watch is a really significant addition and adds a really solid value, if you are in fact a Netflix subscriber. The only problem with Netflix Instant Watch is that there is a really limited movie list and it can take quite a while to find a decent movie for your Instant Queue. The HD movies streamed consistently without interruption and the picture quality was pristine.

The other problem is that you cannot add movies to Instant Queue directly from the Xbox, you have to go online via a PC, but the instant queue will update almost immediately. There was an announcement of a Netflix app for Windows Mobile so this should relieve that bottleneck (or maybe I could create a Media Center app).

The only real unresolved disappointment was the poor performance of Windows Media Center. While it only took a few minutes to connect to my home PC, once I got it up and running the controls were really slow (I mean in the order of 10-20 seconds per click). My network is running fine, it handles high def streaming with ease. So right now am I assuming there is some contention between the various apps that can share data from my Vista PC (Zune, Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center).

If the Netflix instant watch expands in a significant way this could change how I approach purchasing premium channels from my cable provider.

I thought the recent announcement from Apple and EMI was really interesting. Apparently there will be more DRM free music available directly from iTunes. There is a catch, however, it looks like there will be a premium added to the price of the music ($1.29). Of course you can elect to purchase the DRM version of the music, which will be lower quality, at the regular price of 99 cents.

Tracks that you may have already purchased with DRM could be ‘upgraded’ to DRM less MP3’s for 30 cents. It has also been rumored that older less popular tracks will be available for less than standard 99 cent.

In keeping with this new found musical hierarchy I wanted to suggest several pricing bands the music companies should consider ;)

* I quote from Rocky III –  "You fight great, but I'm a great fighter." - Apollo